ABSTRACT
Lather narrates the methodology of two books on race and schooling in order to address two questions: 1) what light do they shed on shifting imaginaries in the human sciences and 2) what are their implications for fieldwork? Engaging post-critical, post-human, and post-qualitative ideas, Lather explores theories of anti-Blackness, especially “a strand of work in black studies” termed Afro-pessimism (Slaby, 2020, p. 173), in relation to social justice methodology. Her central argument is that the methodological elaboration of such contemporary currents in social theorizing offers rich resources for qualitative research.
